The government will start open market sale of rice within this month to arrest its price uptrend, the minister for food and disaster management, Chowdhury Kamal Ibne Yusuf, said.

The inter-ministerial committee on food policy and monitoring at a meeting today will finalise the date to start the OMS, he told journalists at his secretariat office Saturday. One lakh tonnes of rice will be sold in the open markets across the country and it will continue till April-May, the beginning of Boro harvest, he said. The rice will be sold through 10,700 dealers and the government will strictly monitor it.

The minister, however, did not cite the price to be fixed for OMS. The government has decided to restart the OMS as price of all varieties of rice has recently shot up all over the country, he said. ‘We have plenty of food-grains in stock and the rice price would come down significantly with the start of the OMS’.

The government earlier on October 21, 2004, started open market sale of rice as its price went up in the aftermath of the prolonged flood last year. The OMS continued till November 12.

The country has a stock of about 6 lakh tonnes of food grain against the capacity of 18 lakh tonnes, the minister said.

The ministry sources, however, said the present food stock is less than 4 lakh tonnes. Kamal said the government has decided to procure 132,500 tonnes of food grain — 70,000 tonnes will be procured from India within the next month and 62,500 tonnes to be procured locally — as buffer stock.

Under the US food aid, he said, the country would get 70,000 tonnes of wheat — 20,000 tonnes likely to reach by February 20-22 while the remaining 50,000 tonnes within March.

Besides, the government will import 3 lakh tonnes of food grain within March 30. He also said that the government was considering procurement of 50,000-100,000 tonnes of food grain from Australia, Thailand and Pakistan through government-to-government negotiations or by floating tenders for private sector imports.